equal
effective
. Indeed, in many cases, the introduction of the mobile as an
entry mechanic simply serves to divorce the customer from the product
and reduce the chances of an actual purchase taking place. Be vigilant —
showmanship lurks around every corner.
Ease equals
convenience
Ease is a key factor in effective marketing communications, and what is
more — as I hope this chapter demonstrates — it permeates right into the
heart of marketing itself. So if the process of analyzing your communica-
tions for their “easiness” takes you deeper than expected, then surely that’s
a good thing.
The more hurdles you can anticipate — and remove — the more partici-
pation and repeat sales you’ll get. This principle applies across the spec-
trum, from advertising for binoculars to promoting beer in a pub.
As the faxback and try-me-free case studies illustrate, the tipping point
can be remarkably unobtrusive when it comes to customer response. We
naively tried to make our faxback mailing easier, and almost killed off
response. A small detail that you might easily overlook could make the dif-
ference between profit and loss. (Your small detail could be your cus-
tomer’s insurmountable hurdle.)
Your customer gets — by one of the more conservative estimates I have
seen — 254 commercial messages every day,
12
over 90,000 uninvited intru-
sions into their already busy life every year. How much effort can you real-
istically expect them to make on your behalf?
The answer, of course, is not a lot. But get navigation right and the inter-
ested customer will take a first step in your direction. Remove the practical
hurdles — and do this at the start of your thinking — and you can maintain
your customer’s momentum.
To
paraphrase Paco Underhill, chief exponent of the “science of shop-
ping”: make life difficult for your customer at your peril, for “amenability
and profitability are totally and inextricably related.”
13
STEP 2: EASE
65
Steps you can take
So far in this chapter I’ve made little mention of direct marketing — or, at
least, of direct
mail
. Yet of course, there is probably no other area of mar-
keting communication more obsessed with ease than direct mail. I say
obsessed, because if you read between the lines of any direct marketing
handbook (and there are some very good ones
14
) you’ll find that a signifi-
cant proportion of the advice concerns ease: simple things you can do to
make it easier for your customer to respond.
Indeed, John Watson, a leading direct marketing practitioner for over a
quarter of a century, goes so far as to say (and I paraphrase):
“If there is a secret of successful direct mail, it is to devote your mail-
ing to the action you want your reader to take.”
People in the business of making mailings tend to call the physical ele-
ments of a mailing the
for
mat
. This is the size, the shape, the material, the
various pieces, the layout, the color, and so on. When it comes to ease, it’s
the format that can make a real difference for your customer.
Clear your customer’s path
A good place to start is with the envelope. Can your customer open it? If
your customer is a little old lady with arthritis and it is a tough polythene
envelope, the answer is probably not.
In fact, not only are they awkward to open, but polythene envelopes or
shrinkwraps always seem to transfer a film of grime to your hands and
clothes. In a recent mini-survey I conducted, the average account execu-
tive’s wastebin contained 2.7 unopened items of polythene-wrapped mail.
Ne
xt, can your customer read your writing? If they’re over 40 and
you’ve set some of the text in 5-point type, then I doubt it. If they don’t
have their reading glasses handy, you’re in trouble.
But surely nobody would send out a mailing with essential instructions
set in 5-point type? As you’ll recall, the UK National Lottery did.
DOES YOUR MARKETING SELL?
66
OK, your customer has found their specs. What about a pen? Even in
the office pens go walkabout, and at home I can only put it down to the
Borrowers. I’m especially amazed that more pen makers don’t include free
personalized samples in their mailings to businesses.
While a pen should not generally be too much of a hurdle, it can make
a difference. The Cancer Research UK mailing shown in Figure 25 contains
a free pen. The charity’s experience is that
this can create an uplift of 50 percent. Of
course, a free pen in these circumstances
is not just something to write with — it’s
a small gift and an indication
of the urgency of the appeal,
both of which may addition-
ally influence the recipient’s
feelings and inclination to
respond.
You should also ask
yourself whether your cus-
tomer needs a pen at all. If
you have sent customers a
personalized mailing
(i.e. with their
name and address
lasered on it),
then why not
just ask them to send
it back? (Or part of it, or a
separately personalized slip or
card.) If all you need is a “yes,” you
STEP 2: EASE
67
Figure 25
A mailing from Cancer Research UK. It contains everything the cus-
tomer needs to reply. The charity’s experience is that the inclusion of
a free pen can create an uplift in response of 50 percent. Reproduced
by kind permission of Cancer Research UK.
can make life as simple for your customer as placing a postage-paid card
into their out-tray.
Then there’s the issue of allotting your customer enough space in which
to write. Given that this is usually the object of the exercise — as I high-
lighted in the earlier discussion of reply coupons — it’s remarkable how
often marketers make it a trial.
Confidentiality is an invisible factor, but nonetheless one that could
prove to be a tipping point. Some people just don’t like the idea of their
details going naked through the post, even for the most innocuous of
requests. We discovered that we could get a better response from very
senior managers (to our win-a-prize mailings) if the subject matter wasn’t
obvious from the completed reply device. So we provided reply-paid
envelopes. More lowly staff had no such inhibitions when it came to get-
ting their names in the hat — and a reply postcard worked fine.
Design the reply device first
There is a range of explanations for why you might design the reply device
first. One argument goes that your customer — intending to respond — will
remove the reply device and discard the rest of the mailing. Later, if they
can’t find all they need to know on the reply device, the buying process will
break down.
American adman Fred E Hahn says that busy readers, especially in busi-
ness, often go straight to the reply device. Before spending time learning all
the details, they want to discover what the offer will cost in dollars, time,
effort, or other commitment. In response to this behavior, copywriters now
load the reply device with the key benefits, and summarize the offer, the
guarantee, and the conditions. Often, they design the reply device first.
15
If you recall my counsel to “think tabloid,” you’ll recognize a great sim-
ilarity in the way Hahn’s logic acknowledges the busy customer’s demands
for information. It’s as much of a navigation as an ease issue, but never-
theless valuable.
For me there’s an even more basic reason why you should tackle the
reply device first. Simply, it puts ease high on your agenda. It gives ease a
DOES YOUR MARKETING SELL?
68
chance to stake a claim before all the space is gobbled up by images, graph-
ics, headlines, and copy.
It forces you to consider how your customer will respond, and how you
can help them. So even if you don’t actually have a physical reply device
(response may be by phone or internet), it ensures that ease is not an
afterthought. I find it useful to make a range of blank, actual-size mock-ups
of an ad, mailing, or leaflet before I begin to write a single word.
Say “This is the reply device”
It can be as simple as putting the words “order form” in bold at the top of
the order form. Or, “bring this card with you.” Or, “ring here for beer.” Or,
as I illustrated earlier (and see Figure 26), “tear-off reply card” — which,
productively, is not only a description but also an instruction, give or take
a hyphen.
The tipster’s mailing that I mentioned in the introduction started to
wo
rk once we emphasized the reply device. The latter was originally an
STEP 2: EASE
69
Figure 26
A repeat of the Warbur-
tons “tear-off” mailing shown earlier,
which simultaneously informs and
instructs. © Reproduced by kind per-
mission of Warburtons Ltd.
integral part of the main letter and had to be cut out, so I recommended a
more involved arrangement, in which it became a separate slip (“return
this to register and claim your three free tips”) held by two paperclips over
the front of the letter, roughly in the middle. To read the letter the cus-
tomer had no choice but to interact with the reply device. As I stated ear-
lier, response increased by more than 750 percent.
Straight-talking British direct marketer George Smith gave this equally
direct advice:
“You are not selling computers, copying machines or whatever. You
are selling reply forms!”
I like it.
Go with the flow
Our faxback mailing patently did not go with the flow. It required our cus-
tomer to make a significant detour. Our mailback cell worked because it
stuck to the tried-and-trusted route: in-tray to desk to out-tray.
The more closely you can engineer the means of response to match your
customer’s usual behavior, the more chance that they will reply. Take, for
example, the buzzphrase “traffic builder.” This is an offer that is sent or
communicated to your customer when they are outside an establishment,
to encourage them to go inside. The customer constitutes the traffic. (And
outside may mean literally outside on the sidewalk or anywhere else —
most likely at home.) The supermarkets do quite a lot of this sort of thing,
and here’s an analysis you might like to try for yourself.
I live six minutes from Sainsbury’s, eight minutes from Tesco, and ten min-
utes from Safeway.
16
My shopping pattern is about 80 percent Sainsbury’s, 15
percent Tesco, and 5 percent Safeway. (A recent study indicated that 40 per-
cent of shoppers travel less than 10 minutes to their main store.
17
)
Sainsbury’s feels the easiest to get to (there’s only one unpredictable
junction). A trip to Tesco involves a drive through a busy commercial
bottleneck (or alternatively winding rat-runs mined with “sleeping police-
DOES YOUR MARKETING SELL?
70
men”, those annoying road humps that slow down traffic). To reach
Safeway, I actually have to drive past Sainsbury’s.
I buy pretty much the same brands and products in each chain. Indeed, I
can’t really distinguish between their offerings, so my shopping pattern must
be determined by the inherent physical obstacles, relatively insignificant
though they may seem: Tesco plus two minutes, Safeway plus four minutes.
The great Claude Hopkins went so far as to state: “No one can prof-
itably change habits in paid print.”
18
I think these are salutary words for the
modern-day marketer. Going against the flow is one of the toughest chal-
lenges you can tackle. (What would it take to turn your shopping habits on
their head?)
Think carrots
Occasionally Tesco sends me traffic-building mailings with coupons —
some of which are based on my meager spend (and therefore not of very
high value). For Sainsbury’s I get a low-key ongoing discount via my loy-
alty card at the store.
Every week while I was writing this, Safeway took the trouble to deliver
a promotional leaflet through my door. When its much-publicized 20p-off-
a-liter petrol promotion was introduced, I began to take notice of the
leaflet. There were some good offers. Plus a £5 off coupon if I spent over
£30. I decided to set out on a serious discount-shopping experiment, and
planned a big list and an empty tank. I made a one-quarter saving on my
grocery bill and saved £21 on petrol — in total over £76 in one trip.
The less you are able to engineer the means of response to match your
customer’s usual behavior, the bigger incentive you’ll need to offer. Rather
than build a dual carriageway direct from my house to its car park, Safeway
went for the carrots big style: “Save 20p a litre on petrol and get BOGOFs
19
on lots of long-life household goods.” It worked. Not surprisingly, my shop-
ping pattern changed.
There are two lessons here. First: All is not lost if you can’t remove the
hurdles. Second: Can you afford the carrots? (Remember that Safeway was
bought out by Morrisons.)
STEP 2: EASE
71
A last word about ease
I’ll leave this to Drayton Bird (of whom David Ogilvy said: “He knows more
about direct marketing than anyone else in the world”). In describing the
attributes of
Reader’s Digest
mailings he writes:
“Note how careful they are to tell — very often at the beginning of a
letter — how easy it is to respond and exactly how to do so.